E.U. Chief Promises Strategic Dialogue with Farmers

The pres­i­dent of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has announced that the European Union will embark on a dia­logue about the future of farm­ing in the bloc.

“We want to launch a strate­gic dia­logue on the future of agri­cul­ture in the E.U.,” von der Leyen said In her annual State of the Union speech deliv­ered before a ple­nary ses­sion of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, last week.

“I am and remain con­vinced that agri­cul­ture and the pro­tec­tion of our nat­ural world can go hand in hand,” she added. ​“We need both.”

Earlier in her speech, the E.U. chief expressed her grat­i­tude to farm­ers ​“for pro­vid­ing us with food day after day.”

She also said that pro­duc­ing food ​“is not always an easy task,” adding that Europe’s farm­ers are fac­ing new chal­lenges, includ­ing droughts, fires and flood­ing, and new oblig­a­tions stem­ming from the European reg­u­la­tions on sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture.

“We must work together with the men and women in farm­ing to tackle these new chal­lenges,” von der Leyen said. ​“That is the only way to secure the sup­ply of food for the future.”

Members of the European Parliament applauded von der Leyen’s move to make an exten­sive ref­er­ence to farm­ers after the E.U.’s pri­mary sec­tor was over­looked in last year’s annual speech by the com­mis­sion pres­i­dent.

“[There is] finally a recog­ni­tion for farmer’s hard work pro­vid­ing healthy and suf­fi­cient food every day,” said social­ist mem­ber of the par­lia­ment Paolo De Castro.

Copa-Cogeca, the umbrella group of E.U. farm­ing orga­ni­za­tions and agri­cul­tural coop­er­a­tives, wel­comed von der Leyen’s pledge to ini­ti­ate a dia­logue on agri­cul­ture. However, they said more details must be pro­vided.

“We await fur­ther details on the frame­work of this dia­logue, which should form part of the prepara­tory work for the future Common Agricultural Policy,” the group said.

Critics argued that the E.U. chief opted for a vague ref­er­ence to a strate­gic dia­logue on farm­ing to assuage con­cerns from con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal par­ties about the E.U.’s cli­mate and sus­tain­abil­ity poli­cies, effec­tively delay­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of the bloc’s green agenda.

“We can no longer accept that the future of the E.U. Green Deal and the much-needed tran­si­tion towards sus­tain­able food sys­tems, which will ensure Europe’s long-term food secu­rity, depend on polit­i­cal par­ties’ agenda and pri­vate vested inter­ests,” said Madeleine Coste, direc­tor of advo­cacy at Slow Food, an orga­ni­za­tion focused on pre­serv­ing local food cul­tures and tra­di­tions.

Led by the cen­ter-right European People’s Party, the biggest law­maker group of the European Parliament and von der Leyen’s polit­i­cal fam­ily, European con­ser­v­a­tives have opposed the bloc’s green poli­cies, rea­son­ing that addi­tional green leg­is­la­tion would fur­ther bur­den Europe’s farm­ers and com­pa­nies and threaten food secu­rity.

Rumors that the E.U. chief might not come up with pro­pos­als to mold the remain­ing bits of the land­mark Farm to Fork strat­egy, namely the sus­tain­able foods sys­tem law and an over­haul of ani­mal wel­fare, were also con­firmed after von der Leyen’s speech.

“In over one hour of speech, the two files or even the words ​‘Farm to Fork’ were not men­tioned once,” Euractiv, an online news media spe­cial­ized in E.U. poli­cies, reported. ​“Our take is that, at least in its approach, the over-ambi­tious ​‘Farm to Fork’ is basi­cally over.”

According to the let­ter of intent of von der Leyen’s annual address to the European Parliament, the actions listed in her speech will be detailed and com­ple­mented in the commission’s 2024 work pro­gram.

• European Commission
• Slow Food
• Euroactiv